Famitsu Top 50
- [NSW] Monster Hunter Rise (Capcom) - 2.285.466
- [NSW] Momotaro Dentetsu (Konami) – 1.028.173
- [NSW] Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury - 805.364
- [NSW] Ring Fit Adventure – 594.933
- [NSW] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 452.125
- [NSW] Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 441.561
- [NSW] Minecraft (Microsoft) – 341.564
- [NSW] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 320.402
- [NSW] Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town (Marvelous) – 281.140
- [NSW] New Pokemon Snap (Pokemon Co.) - 256.863
- [NSW] Pokemon Sword / Shield + Expansion Pass (Pokemon Co.) - 247.388
- [NSW] Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics - 223.893
- [NSW] Splatoon 2 - 208.531
- [NSW] Super Mario Party - 199.528
- [PS4] Resident Evil Village (Capcom) - 191.983
- [NSW] Miitopia - 187.505
- [PS4] NieR Replicant (Square Enix) - 158.265
- [NSW] Game Builder Garage - 157.753
- [NSW] Monster Hunter Stories 2 (Capcom) - 137.676 / NEW
- [NSW] Bravely Default II (Square Enix) – 136.091
- [NSW] Mario Golf: Super Rush - 129.448
- [NSW] Rune Factory 5 (Marvelous) - 127.968
- [NSW] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 107.901
- [NSW] Baseball Spirits 2021 (Konami) - 106.597 / NEW
- [NSW] Super Mario 3D All-Stars - 104.782
- [NSW] Pikmin 3 Deluxe - 103.273
- [NSW] Fitness Boxing 2 (Imagineer) - 86.255
- [NSW] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe - 80.508
- [NSW] Dragon Quest XI S (Square Enix) - 79.824
- [NSW] Little Nightmares II (Bandai Namco) - 72.796
- [NSW] Super Mario Maker 2 - 72.510
- [NSW] Super Mario Odyssey - 70.732
- [PS4] Samurai Warriors 5 (Koei Tecmo) - 70.376
- [NSW] Human Fall Flat (Teyon Japan) - 68.533
- [NSW] Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin (Marvelous) - 65.620
- [NSW] Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (Koei Tecmo) - 62.119
- [NSW] Samurai Warriors 5 (Koei Tecmo) - 55.570
- [PS5] Resident Evil Village (Capcom) - 53.953
- [NSW] Luigi's Mansion 3 - 45.207
- [NSW] Fishing Spirits (Bandai Namco) - 44.958
- [NSW] Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum 'n' Fun! (Bandai Namco) - 42.507
- [NSW] Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training - 38.944
- [NSW] Minecraft Dungeons (Microsoft) - 38.147
- [NSW] Kirby Star Allies - 37.954
- [NSW] Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 (Sega) - 36.105
- [NSW] Family Trainer (Bandai Namco) - 35.273
- [PS4] Biomutant (THQ Nordic) - 30.292
- [NSW] Densha de Go!! (Square Enix) - 29.624
- [PS4] Scarlet Nexus(Bandai Namco) - 29.546
- [NSW] Apex Legends (Electronic Arts) - 29.057
NSW -
44
PS4 -
5
PS5 -
1
TOTAL:
10.612.583
TOTAL NSW:
10.078.168 (95%)
TOTAL PS4/PS5:
534.415 (5%)
Top 10 Publishers:
- Nintendo - 4.382.854 (41.3%)
- Capcom - 2.669.078 (25.2%)
- Konami - 1.134.770 (10.7%)
- Pokemon Co - 504.251 (4.6%)
- Marvelous - 474.728 (4.5%)
- Square Enix - 403.804 (3.8%)
- Microsoft - 379.711 (3.6%)
- Bandai Namco - 225.080 (2.1%)
- Koei Tecmo - 188.065 (1.8%)
- Imagineer - 86.255 (0.8%)
Next week
Skyward Sword and
Shin-chan launch, pushing
Apex Legends &
Scarlet Nexus outside of the Top 50.
The top selling PS4 game of the year
Resident Evil: Village has dropped out of the weekly rankings, the initial physical shipment of the game was between
185K to
225K meaning that via discounts it will likely sell out its initial shipment but unlikely to receive a second shipment this year. Next major titles launching on the PS4/PS5 are in September, so there would be a long period in the summer and Obon where there is not going to be a title likely to surpass
50K on the PS4/PS5.
There is actually a decent chance that even the PS5 version of
Village will drop out of the chart as a fair few of the titles below it are likely outselling it for the past few months but we haven't gotten any updates from them. So by early September PS4/PS5 software could very well be below
400K in the Top 50. September things are looking a bit better with
Tales of Arise &
Lost Judgement but still a massive decline from last year.
Top 30 PS4 Games Q1-Q3 2020:
- Final Fantasy VII Remake (Square Enix) - 932.821
- Ghost of Tsushima (Sony) - 399.370
- Resident Evil 3 (Capcom) - 258.676
- Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon (Sega) - 243.769
- The Last of Us Part II (Sony) - 222.943
- eBaseball Powerful Pro Baseball 2020 (Konami) - 180.243
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme Vs. MaxiBoost On (Bandai Namco) - 161.014
- Nioh 2 (Koei Tecmo) - 156.772
- Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers (Atlus) - 149.898
- Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot (Bandai Namco) - 149.654
- Trials of Mana (Square Enix) - 133.593
- One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 (Bandai Namco) - 131.315
- Granblue Fantasy Versus (Cygames) - 111.094
- The Legend of Heroes: Hajimari no Kiseki (Nihon Falcom) - 96.140
- Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris (Bandai Namco) - 85.010
- Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers (Atlus) - 65.653
- Monster Hunter: World - Iceborne (Capcom) - 63.322
- Grand Theft Auto V: Premium Online Edition (Take-Two) - 54.860
- Marvel's Avengers (Square Enix) - 54.373
- eFootball Winning Eleven 2021 Season Update (Konami) - 35.996
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Sony) - 34.820
- Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14 (Koei Tecmo) - 33.644
- Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (Square Enix) - 33.203
- Remnant: From the Ashes (DMM Games) - 26.670
- 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (Atlus) - 20.050
- Katana Kami: A Way of the Samurai Story (Spike Chunsoft) - 17.599
- Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions (Bandai Namco) - 16.822
- Fairy Tail (Koei Tecmo) - 15.344
- Neptunia Virtual Stars (Compile Heart) - 12.331
- Bayonetta & Vanquish (Sega) - 11.312
TOTAL:
3.908.338
This year
Konami, Marvelous & Capcom combined Switch output has outsold the PS4's result from last year.
While we saw that a Remake of
RE3 is something the latest
Village game is struggling to surpass(with major price cuts) across two SKUs.
Nier Replicant could have been a candidate for
300K had it launched two years ago on the PS4, while the system was much better at moving software.
The decline of PS4 software was expected ever since Sony started to talk about a fast transition to the PS5.. the main reason being that they stopped producing the system in great numbers last year they only shipped a little over
500K systems to Japan, this year its likely the PS4 will end up with
200K units at most. In 2015 which was PS4's second year they shipped
180K PS3s and
959K PSV, which basically meant that as an ecosystem PS4 was less than 50% of their total hardware sales. In terms of Software the situation was also very different, with older systems still doing the majority of the lifting:
Top 30 PSV/PS3/PS4 2015:
- [PSV] Minecraft (Sony) - 478.478
- [PS3] Dragon Quest Heroes (Square Enix) - 456.357
- [PS4] Metal Gear Solid V (Konami) - 421.743
- [PS3] Tales of Zestiria (Bandai Namco) - 369.162
- [PSV] God Eater 2 (Bandai Namco) - 342.983
- [PS4] Dragon Quest Heroes (Square Enix) - 325.778
- [PS4] Call of Duty: Black Ops (Sony) - 274.270
- [PS3] Yakuza 0 (Sega) - 242.761
- [PS3] Metal Gear Solid V (Konami) - 234.064
- [PS4] Bloodborne (Sony) - 209.538
- [PSV] Sword Art Online: Lost Song (Bandai Namco) - 192.047
- [PSV] God Eater: Resurrection (Bandai Namco) - 164.361
- [PS4] Star Wars: Battlefront (Electronic Arts) - 162.325
- [PS3] One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 (Bandai Namco) - 154.036
- [PS4] Fallout 4 (Bethesda) - 149.367
- [PS4] The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Spike Chunsoft) - 145.856
- [PS4] Yakuza 0 (Sega) - 144.798
- [PS3] 3rd Super Robot Wars Z (Bandai Namco) - 144.325
- [PS4] Final Fantasy Type-0 HD (Square Enix) - 137.640
- [PSV] 3rd Super Robot Wars Z (Bandai Namco) - 130.600
- [PS3] Resident Evil: Revelations 2 (Capcom) - 129.370
- [PS3] Pro Baseball Spirits 2015 (Konami) - 125.608
- [PSV] Tokyo Xanadu (Nihon Falcom) - 123.778
- [PS3] Winning Eleven 2016 (Konami) - 121.272
- [PSV] Persona 4: Dancing All Night (Atlus) - 119.090
- [PSV] Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth (Bandai Namco) - 115.880
- [PS4] Battlefield: Hardline (Electronic Arts) - 112.493
- [PS3] Dragon Ball: Xenoverse (Bandai Namco) - 110.937
- [PSV] Taiko no Tatsujin: V Version (Bandai Namco) - 102.758
- [PSV] One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 (Bandai Namco) - 97.768
PSV -
10
PS3 -
10
PS4 -
10
TOTAL:
6.039.443
PS3 TOTAL:
2.087.892 (34.6%)
PS4 TOTAL:
2.083.808 (34.5%)
PSV TOTAL:
1.867.743 (30.9%)
Without a strong overall ecosystem like we had in 2015, it's difficult to compete.
2015 was a very different time as at that point 3DS was already in decline in Japan, while the Wii U's only positive was
Splatoon which is still just a single game, regardless of how much it ended up selling. PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 3 were still selling a good amount of software while PlayStation 4 was seen by third parties as the only possible future for the Japanese market. Its around this time that
Monster Hunter World, Dragon Quest XI were being worked on as PlayStation exclusives;
Square later added the separate 3DS version, understanding that it's a big risk to have such a huge decline in Japan when the franchise rarely managed over
1 million sales outside the country.
Another thing that third parties considered at the time is that Sony wasn't really competing with them in Japan, in 2015 for example only three games in the Top 30 were published by Sony across the three devises -
Minecraft on the Vita, Bloodborne & Call of Duty: Black Ops. This lack of competition definitely played a part of their decision making and the reason most of them decided not to support the Switch despite some of them being extremely successful on the 3DS in Japan. Obviously the fact that 3DS never caught on outside of Japan also was a factor as most were expecting the Switch to fail.
Fast forward 6 years and the situation is vastly different, in the past 12 months third parties have sold over
7 million software on the Switch; the Switch its self is going to overtake the 3DS's lifetime sales next year and at the moment it's looking likely that eventually might catch-up to the DS's
32 million lifetime sales, it's massively successful overseas and is likely to end up the best selling video game system of all time. East Asian countries are following similar market trends to Japan, with China finally seeing accelerated console adoption making it a big opportunity for Japanese publishers.
So just from a competitive stand-point PS5 launched at the worst possible time in Japan & East Asia, with Japanese third parties generally being slow to transition to next gen systems - this transition will be further stalled by the software sales we are seeing so far on the device which are the worse we've seen historically during a launch year; couple this with the zombie state of PS4 software sales where games like
Scarlet Nexus are failing to even surpass
50K across two SKUs in Japan and you've got a lot of pressure being placed on Publishers aligned to PS4/PS5 exclusivity in Japan that ignore the market leader.
Next year is shaping up to continue this trend, especially as one of the strengths Sony had in the past actually turning against them. Earlier I spoke about the lack of competition from Sony in Japan; well that's also become a weakness now as third parties won't have an incentive to support the PS5 and Sony themselves lacking the 1st party games that appeal to Japan. Since dissolving the Japan studio they've also lost a lot of relationships in the third party space.
Honestly at this time I don't see how things can turn around, because PlayStations design philosophy since stopping the support for Vita is pretty much the opposite of what would make it successfully compete with Nintendo in Japan. Had there been as much time and effort invested into Vita as Sony invested into Virtual Reality, it would have done respectable numbers in Japan and a lot of the smaller developers that used to be able to find success on the ecosystem would still have a home there, while also putting Sony into a better position right now. I understand that PS4 was massively successful World Wide for Sony, especially with microtransactions bringing huge profits combined with their subscription service but the long term consequences of handing Japan over to Nintendo will become noticeable in the next few years.
In the past it was Nintendo's 1st Party that sold their hardware; Japanese third parties is what made the PS2/PSP, PS3, PSV & PS4 successful in Japan. As more third parties choose to prioritize the Switch going forward it would give Nintendo a competitive advantage over Sony & Microsoft in other markets that value these type of games, in the past this was a competitive advantage for Sony over Microsoft which shouldn't be underestimated especially in some of the fastest growing markets in East Asia.
